Clock Of The Long Now and over 360,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Learn more

 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
Express Checkout with PayPhrase
What's this? | Create PayPhrase
Sorry!
More Buying Choices
55 used & new from $1.22

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer
 
 
Start reading Clock Of The Long Now on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.
 
  

Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Time and Responsibility.What a prime subject for vapid truism and gaseous generalities adding up to the world's most boring sermon..." (more)
Key Phrases: digital dark age, tragic optimism, infinite game, Danny Hillis, Moore's Law, Brian Eno (more...)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)

List Price: $14.00
Price: $12.60 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $1.40 (10%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Want it delivered Wednesday, November 11? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
24 new from $6.84 29 used from $1.22 2 collectible from $14.00

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
  Kindle Edition $9.99 -- --
  School & Library Binding $25.80 $25.80 --
  Paperback $12.60 $6.84 $1.22

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand

Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer + How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built
  • This item: Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer by Stewart Brand

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details


Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

by Stewart Brand
5.0 out of 5 stars (7)  $17.13
Finite and Infinite Games

Finite and Infinite Games

by James P. Carse
4.1 out of 5 stars (45)  $7.99
Massive Change

Massive Change

by Bruce Mau
4.5 out of 5 stars (6)  $19.77
The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World

The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World

by Peter Schwartz
4.1 out of 5 stars (50)  $12.21
The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must

The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must

by Robert Zubrin
4.4 out of 5 stars (77)  $12.48
Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The image of our planet on the cover of Brand's Whole Earth Catalog communicated a powerful symbol of the big picture. Brand's new, mind-stretching book challenges readers to get outside themselves and combat the short-term irresponsible thinking that has led to environmental destruction and social chaos. Brand also eloquently urges us to distill and preserve knowledge. Though we seem to live in an age of information overload (each new U.S. president leaves behind more papers than all the previous ones combined), Brand contends that we actually inhabit an age of rapid information loss. Because of changing storage media, as one researcher has quipped, "digital information lasts foreverAor five years, whichever comes first." Time capsules don't solve the problem, for 70% of them are lost almost immediately after being sealed. Brand envisages two monuments that will incorporate the long view into our common consciousness. The first is a giant, exquisitely slow clock. It would be big enough to walk around in, and it would display the year, positions of the sun and moon, generations and millennia. The second is the "Ten-Thousand Year Library," a vast underground labyrinth of books. Here we'd preserve enormous amounts of knowledge from history and other long-perspective disciplines. These ideas deserve more than 15 minutes of fame. Quotable quotes, plentiful paradoxes and humane values make this a book to be savored and discussedAslowly. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


From Library Journal

Touted as "the least recognized most influential thinker in America," Brand, creater of The Whole Earth Catalog, wears that mantle with aplomb in his latest offering. He takes on civilization's "pathologically short attention span" with a proposal to encourage us all to assume long-term responsibility for the continuation of the human species. How to do this? By creating both a myth and a mechanism with which to counter our short focus these days, which Brand names as the core of the problem. He spends the remainder of this rumination clarifying that thought and outlining the details of the myth and mechanism that he suggests as a catalyst: a clock that ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and cuckoos but once a millennium. The Clock of the Long Now is both fascinating and, yes, maybe just a bit revolutionary and is most likely to find a suitable home in academic and larger public libraries with readers who are fervent in the desire to see us go on. [See also Brand's "Escaping the Digital Age," LJ 2/1/99, p. 46-48.AEd.]AGeoff Rotunno, "Valley Voice" Newspaper, Goleta, C.
-AGeoff Rotunno, "Valley Voice" Newspaper, Goleta, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 208 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books; New edition edition (April 5, 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0465007805
  • ISBN-13: 978-0465007806
  • Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #227,624 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category: (What's this?)

    #86 in  Books > Science > Technology > Futurology

More About the Author

Stewart Brand
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Visit Amazon's Stewart Brand Page

Inside This Book (learn more)


What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer
79% buy the item featured on this page:
Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer 4.2 out of 5 stars (21)
$12.60
Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto
13% buy
Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto 5.0 out of 5 stars (7)
$17.13
How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built
5% buy
How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built 4.6 out of 5 stars (32)
$19.80
Finite and Infinite Games
2% buy
Finite and Infinite Games 4.1 out of 5 stars (45)
$7.99

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(2)
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

 

Customer Reviews

21 Reviews
5 star:
 (13)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read and pleasantly thought provoking, July 12, 1999
By A Customer
Stewart Brand definitely has a knack for presenting a cross-current of ideas in a way that is simultaneously engaging and thought provoking. While some will find the actual project of the Clock and the Library far fetched, it does form a very effective backdrop for "[forcing] thinking in interesting directions; among other things, toward long-term responsibility."

This is definitely a book to read more than once. I found new thoughts forming as I re-read chapters that were now framed by concepts presented in later chapters. Yet, the chapters are nice and short and self-contained so I could easily pick up the book, re-read some chapter that caught my fancy, and feel satisfied contemplating some aspect of the entirety -- like being able to savor a snack instead of having to eat an entire meal.

I dog-eared "The Order of Civilization" chapter which for me really crystallized analogous concepts concerning the construction of robust "organic" information systems (what I'm supposed to be doing for a living). I loved the concept of layers operating at ever slower paces maintaining the resilience of the overall system. I also found "Ending the Digital Dark Age" very interesting. I highly recommend this book to anyone designing systems that could have an impact on the world for any significant length of time.

Incidentally, the half-past chimes sounded on my century clock while I was reading this book. Maybe that is one of the reasons I liked it so much. Perhaps you have to be "over the hill", riding at ever increasing speed toward the future of your children to really be turned on by these ideas.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Access to important ideas, December 11, 1999
There are two kinds of books that make you feel smart. The first kind is so laughably awful that you put it down thinking "I'm WAY smarter than that guy." The second, and better, kind is a book that leaves you with a couple dozen exciting new ideas whizzing around your head, firing your imagination and inspiring thoughts you would never otherwise have had. This book is the second kind. With solidly-documented ideas and examples drawn from a hundred sources, Brand demonstrates that our relationship to time, and the models we use to think about it, are no longer useful and need to be changed. The new models for thinking about it are included at no charge.
Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A unique view of our responsiblity for the future, September 3, 2000
By Buckeye (Harvard, MA USA) - See all my reviews
  
This book examines the topic of thinking and planning for the long term - and the author definitely means the LONG term. The book focuses on two nascent projects headed up by the author and the "Long Now Foundation" - the effort to build a 10,000 year clock and a 10,000 year library. This projects are intended to help shift humanity's concept of "now" to a much longer time frame. And with this shift in the concept of now, it is hoped that a new concept of responsibility for our individual and group behavior will emerge.

This book and the thinking behind it represent an excellent counterpoint to the prevalent and destructive view of "now" as beeing some extremely short term time frame - today, this week, or (for many corporations) this quarter. One can only hope that it is widely read. If the ideas behind this book and its associated project change only a small segment of our population's view about stewardship and care for the long-term health and longevity of our planet and our race it will be well worth the effort.

While I thought the book was generally very well-written, and presented many, many thought-provoking points, some of the ideas seem to have been rather poorly thought out and gave the impression of having been simply tossed in to the mix. At one point a potential role of the 10,000 year library as a repository of both sides of important debates is described - an excellent idea, but the objective is described as allowing future generations to know who to "blame" if things go wrong. Going to all this trouble just so our descendants can engage in blaming someone for something seems rather silly. Fortunately, there are loftier goals for this project, and many are very well described throughout the book.

This book has strongly impacted the way I think about the future. I highly recommend it.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
Ad
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and comforting
This book captured a lot of the conundrums I have struggled with, and put them into a context that I could understand them. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Devon V. Yates

1.0 out of 5 stars A shame to waste mental energy on this.
Stewart Brand should take up knitting or hammock making! It might prove to be more lucrative (and fulfulling) than writing cerebral books. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mark Henry

5.0 out of 5 stars A+++
Thank you for the book, it was exactly what was expected and come in the mail fast.
Published 21 months ago by J. Faris

3.0 out of 5 stars What's the Rush?
The Long Now Foundation has done some great work since this book was published back in 1999. The group's basic goal of alleviating humanity's destructively short attention span is... Read more
Published on October 19, 2007 by doomsdayer520

5.0 out of 5 stars Civilization's shortening attention span is mismatched with the pace of environmental problems
Steward Brand is a person who thinks 'big'. His major thought in this work is that "Civilization's shortening attention span is mismatched with the pace of environmental... Read more
Published on January 18, 2006 by Shalom Freedman

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly Extraordinary--Core Reading for Future of Earth- Man


I confess to being dumb. Although I know and admire the author, who has spoken at my conference, when the book came out I thought--really dumb, but I mention it because... Read more

Published on September 29, 2002 by Robert D. Steele

2.0 out of 5 stars Facile Yet Ultimately Specious
I wanted to like this book -- big fan of the Whole Earth Catalogs, "How Buildings Learn," Brian Eno and hard science fiction -- but the text kept chasing me away. Read more
Published on July 17, 2002 by Robert Carlberg

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking book on thinking long-term
Brand, author of The Whole Earth Catalog, is part of a team that is endeavoring to build a clock that will last for ten thousand years. Read more
Published on February 15, 2001 by Kevin W. Parker

5.0 out of 5 stars 10,000 years - a tick in the evolution of the universe
This easy to read yet intellectually stimulating book describes the need for mankind to consider the long-term, and presents the Clock of the Long Now project - a clock that will... Read more
Published on November 26, 2000 by Howard Schneider

4.0 out of 5 stars Y2K too mild? Think about Y10K
This book offers great perspectives on time, our future and "progress". Forget megaflops, think about building the worlds slowest computer, something that will last... Read more
Published on April 13, 2000 by Gary Sprandel

Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   




Product Information from the Amapedia Community

Beta (What's this?)


Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject

 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.